Consumer Reports On Tesla Patents, Ford MPG Woes – Video

In this episode of “Talking Cars,” Consumer Reports discusses Tesla’s decision to open its patent portfolio, as well as Ford’s MPG woes, which includes the plug-in hybrid C-Max Energi and Fusion Energi.

Then, Consumer Reports answer some viewer questions. This is followed by Consumer Reports responding to a YouTube commenter who questions the entire idea of a show called “Talking Cars.”

Yep, this is surely one of the more interesting episodes of “Talking Cars.”

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I would expect CR to be more accurate in their reporting in the sense that if I walked into Tesla hq and said give me your patents, they would laugh, and give me nothing. I btw, am including myself in the set, everyone.
If you are an established car company you can get access to their patents. Everyone is not an established car company so everyone can’t have or use their patents. Picking nits, yes, but I am tired of incorrect and misleading usage of language.

Yes, they’d laugh at you because you don’t have to actually walk into their office. Patents are filed with the US Patent Office and are public documents. That’s the whole point of the system – public disclosure of the invention. There is online access. Elon basically said “use them and we won’t sue you first”.

And I should add, with the disclosure, it becomes every one else’s responsibility to not infringe. So, patents are not secrets. They are secret during the application process which can take several years. If you see “patent pending” then you won’t be able to look at it.

The CR guys don’t quite understand the patent system but that’s not a surprise.

it is no longer the case that patents are held in secret until they issue into patents. that ended over a decade ago. i doubt that Tesla’s “open patents” work the way that most people think. it is very important, though, to see the fine print before you can make definitive statements. if Tesla really were to make an unqualified statement of “we won’t sue if you use our patents”, such would effectively amount to a renunciation of their patent rights and then they would lose the ability to sue. what i think “open patents” means is that Tesla will license it’s patents to those who request a license to use the patents. the difference here is that you can’t just start using Tesla intellectual property, but you have to request a grant from Tesla first. in that case, this announcement is a statement from Tesla encouraging people to ask. based on the Tesla announcement, there will probably be no license fee, but that doesn’t mean that the license would be granted without any restrictions whatsoever. you can’t know such things until you see the agreement. in any event, i think that the CR panel is incorrect if they think… Read more »

I believe elon said we won’t sue you if you don’t sue us. So, it’s not a renuciation.

I honestly don’t think it actually means anything because anyone using their IP is in a mexican standoff with them (sorry if that’s politically incorrect). Very few companies would willingly put themselves in a position where they weren’t able to file a lawsuit. I’m pretty sure there would be licensing discussions.